Dig My Shallow Grave - 15 Drabbles
by stormcin
Summary: 15 drabbles taking place after the end of season 9. Focus on Demon!Dean.
1. Waking

There was nothing but darkness.

The dingy motel mirror was barely lit by a guttering bare bulb. Still, Dean stared into as if he could find every answer lost, grasp the threads of memories that haunted him, and rediscover who he was. But he could see nothing. Nothing but the black of his eyes and the blood that stained him – sprayed high over his face, arching over one cheekbone like another brand marring his hide.

His slid his tongue along his lower lip and he wondered if blood had ever tasted like this to him before. Like he could taste the life of the demon he'd ganked. The death that he had wrought. Like sugar and cinnamon, battery acid and vodka.

Laying his fingers to the pitted silver of the mirror, resting them beside his blackened eyes. He blinked and a strange sensation slithered over them, like the scales of a snake. When he opened his lids, his own green irises were staring back at him, just like they had in countless other hotel mirrors, countless other times. Slowly, the memories of who he had been in his other life were coming back to him.

He leaned closer to the mirror, almost heedless of the blood congealing on his cheek. "Well," he whispered, his lips pulling back in a predatory grin. His eyes snaked back into black. "Ain't that a bitch."


	2. Beginning

Thanks for all the follows guys! Appreciate it! That finale had me screaming, eh? I woke people in my house up. XD

* * *

Pulling away, Dean took a moment to admire his work. The blood running from Sam's mouth and nose, the blooming black bruises shading his eyes, the useless arm broken at both collarbone and wrist. This pain was only a fraction of what he was itching to do.

Sam lifted his head, his gaze desperately reaching out to him. "Dean, please..." he whined, his speech a stumbling slur over shattered teeth and swollen lips. "I know you're in there... please."

The demon leaned back in, sliding one finger along Sam's cheek where the skin had split open. Sam's breath caught in his throat, and Dean gave him a reassuring smile. "I'm right here, Sammy. Right here." The beating hadn't been enough to break Sam's spirit, but the kind inflection in his voice brought tears to Sam's eyes.

Considering the crimson staining his finger, Dean's grin grew, destroying the facade he had put on. A mocking tone entered his voice as his eyes darkened. "And I'm proud of us. The whiny bitch who wouldn't save me from hell, or purgatory, whose heaven was empty of family. And now, he can't save himself."

Sam's head dropped, his lanky, bloodstained hair obscuring his face. Shoulder's shaking, his voice was barely a whisper. "Are you going to kill me?"

"Of course not, baby brother," Dean murmured, licking the blood off his finger. "we're just getting started."


	3. Perdition

The needle jack-rabbited against his skin, the pounding fading away into a numbing rhythm. Angling his head away from their reflection in the full length mirror, Dean leaned his cheek against the tacky vinyl of the ragged seat.

Setting the needle aside, the tattoo artist ran a wet cloth over the inflamed skin. "You still want the colour now?"

Breaking from his thoughts, Dean grinned at him. "Yeah. Let's finish this bad boy."

The man raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. "You're a braver man than I."

As he turned away, Dean sat up, twisting to look at his reflection. The blackened contours of a dragon snaked its way over muscles and tendons up his arm, every scale and talon and incisor drawn in perfect detail. With a feather-light touch, he traced a finger up the length. Just below the handprint seared into his shoulder, the jaws opened wide, blood staining the monster's teeth. Ready to devour and destroy every trace of the impression.

"That's an interesting brand." The man said, swinging back to Dean with another tattoo needle in his hand. "Must be quite a story behind it."

Dean's eyes fixed on the reflection of the handprint as Castiel's voice sounded in his head, low and rasping as the angel adjusted to his human vessel. _I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition. _

The angel might have brought him back from Hell for a while, but he had ultimately failed to save him. Dean's lips curved up in a smug smile as he thought of the angel's attempts. He had been just another disaster in the long line that marked the angel's life. Castiel and every angel that had stood with him had been a fool. When a soul was desecrated and reborn in the fires of Hell, even the burning touch of an angel couldn't scorch away the evil it had brought to light. Surely an angel should have known that.

Dean's destiny had finally found him, and he intended to make the most of it.

He settled back into the chair, propping one booted ankle over the other. "I could tell you..."

"But then you'd have to kill me?" The tattoo artist asked with a grin.

Feeling the tug of the First Blade in his mind, Dean smirked. "Something like that."


	4. Grace

Castiel's vessel was barely holding together, bleeding bright blue light from every pore. It whisped away as soon as it met the air, leaving the angelic feather duster steaming in the sunlight.

Watching everything through the film of darkness, Dean couldn't take his eyes from Castiel. He had never seen the angel like this. This strange bright light overshadowing his human vessel. As if the body holding him all together was an afterthought, something slapped together. Before this, Dean would have said that Castiel's vessel had been attractive to the right people, now, he could see how wrong he had been. There was very little on this earth that could compete with the beauty of Castiel's angelic form.

It had been the same with Crowley, the sudden realization that the vessel he inhabited meant so very little. As he and Crowely stood, staring down the angel, Dean could feel the heat of Crowley's twisted and decadent soul leaching over as if to thaw the ice that had replaced his blood. Wouldn't that be a kicker. If it really was Crowley's heat that melted away the demon in him, and Castiel's icy blue that caused it to rally again, to throw itself again and again against the cage, screaming for blood.

When the thought crossed his mind, he wondered if Crowley had planned it that way. Maybe the demon hadn't, but Dean knew the laugh Crowley would give if Dean ever voiced that thought. Maybe he would tell him. Wait till the demon had a glass of craig in his hand and blood splattered across both their faces, and then tell him.

"Have we reached a deal than, kitten?" Crowley's purred question drew Dean back. He wasn't sure where Castiel's nickname comes from, but Crowley had it backwards. The demon was the so called cat in the equation, all purrs and sheathed claws, with a determination to wind himself around the feet of those with an evasion to felines. Crowley was the predator. Castiel was something else entirely. Something Dean wasn't sure there was a name for on this earth.

Castiel's gaze had been locked on Crowley during the entire meeting. Now it skittered to Dean, lines marring the skin around his eyes. Even that small action caused more blue to evaporate into the fading light. The angelic bird didn't look like he had much time before he spent all of his grace. What a crying shame.

"Please, Dean." Castiel said, voice even rougher than normal. "Sam and I, we could fix you."

For all of a nanosecond, Dean considered it. Considered returning with Castiel, spending the nights drinking with his brother, using his newfound powers to vanquish monsters. Saving people, hunting things, the family business. But if he returned, he wouldn't get to tear bodies to the breaking point, grin at the familiar feel of boiling blood splattered across him. Sam and Cas would try to put up with him, but behind his back, they would be trying desperately to fix him. And why bother trying to fix him. He was cursed. He was broken. Human, demon, it didn't matter. This was what he loved. The feeling of power in his hands as he held the power to end a person's life. He was the monster that Sam hunted and Castiel couldn't stand to see.

And as far as he was concerned, for the first time in his life, he didn't need saving.

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Have a longer one to make up for being gone. Sorry peeps. But yay, ambigious Crowlean / Desiel feels? Speaking of which, I have a Crowlean/Drowley/Whateverthefuckwecallitnow posted for anyone whose interested. ;D


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